What does our club do?
Promoting friendship is easy! We have our monthly meetings: dinner and a chance to chat. The first meeting of any year decides on the coming year's fund raising. Speakers may come from the chosen charities or be chosen by members. Each year, the President organises a trip for members and their friends. Annually, we have a dinner and social evening with members of Rotary and friends and a Christmas dinner for members. In In March, we celebrate our Charter Anniversary.
To encourage the ideal of personal service, we fund raise for local and national charities in the UK. To further international understanding we raise funds for overseas charities. Practically, we save stamps, knit baby clothes and blankets and make small knitted teddies. We donate items to fill school bags for children in Africa. In times of extreme need, we can dip into our funds to support relief efforts in eg drought or earthquake.
Before Christmas each year we concentrate on planning, speaker meetings, including speakers from our focus charities and small fund raising events. The big stuff comes in the second half of our year (which runs from 1st July). Our charter anniversary is in March with dinner with guests and a speaker. The main international fund raiser is in April. The biggest fund raiser is for the chosen national charity - lunch at Nutters restaurant and a speaker. Past favourites have been Norman Prince, Edwina Currie and the Bar Wizards, This is always a sell out but Nutters are very helpful with squeezing in an extra table.
Sadly, all these events disappeared with lock down in the current year but we hope to pick up the pieces in 2020/21.